


Miracle

by TheProfoundBlade



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: And Ragnar keeps him safe, Basically Athelstan doesn't die, Canon Divergence, Hurt!Ragnar, M/M, S3, a lil bit of fluff, prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-12
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-08-08 10:05:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7753393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheProfoundBlade/pseuds/TheProfoundBlade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was a short drabble written from a prompt. </p>
<p>Prompt: Au where Athelstan doesn't really die, he is attacked by floki but he survives (don't ask me how) and leaves kattegat unseen. He comes back after the raid in paris with a big scar on his neck. Ragnar doesn't want him to get out of his sight out of fear of what could happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Miracle

Miracles were when impossible things happened.

That’s how Ragnar remembered Athelstan’s explanation, anyway. Miracles were when the dead rose from the battlefield to fight again, or when blind men could see once more. Miracles were rare and only given to those worthy of them.

But Ragnar didn’t feel worthy of the miracle standing in the doorway to his bedroom as he blinked awake a few days after landing back in Kattegat.

A few weeks before they all sailed towards Paris, Athelstan had vanished. After he had told Ragnar about his newfound faith, after they had talked to the Wanderer about the mouth of the Seine, after laying plans of how to conquer Paris… together… the little priest had just vanished, no sight of him anywhere, and even when Ragnar had sent his best scouts they found nothing.

It had broken Ragnar’s heart. He was certain the priest was dead. He had laid in a coffin, pretending to be dead while he was carried into the chapel of Paris and thought to himself that soon, soon he would see the priest again. They would meet in heaven, the heaven Ragnar had decided to convert into entering, the heaven where he knew Athelstan would be waiting.

But instead, the priest was waiting here. In the real world. Standing in the doorway, a calm look on his face and his golden necklace shining with a ray of sunshine hitting through the otherwise covered windows.

A miracle.

A painful cough made the king curl together in his bed, the heavy pelts on him damp with sweat from his never-ending fever. His eyes pressed shut and he hated himself for it as he coughed hard and rough; what if it was a dream, and when he blinked again to see Athelstan, he wouldn’t be there, like so many times before?

After clawing at his own chest and stomach, Ragnar gasped for air and opened his bloodshot eyes to look up again. But he still stood there. Athelstan was really there.

“A-ahtelst-”

Another cough, so deep and rough it felt as though it was ripping his throat open anew, and Ragnar once again curled around in his bed. He was exhausted, and once the cough subsided he was laying on his stomach, pressed half-way over the bed frame, as though he was trying to escape. There was a soft touch on his clammy, trembling shoulder and the warmth of it made him whine loudly, weakly; it was a touch he never knew just how much he would miss.

“M-miracle,” he gasped, pushing back into the bed and lifting his head to look. “Y-you are a miracle-”

Athelstan smiled and looked down for a moment, a look that Ragnar loved more than anything he could ever express. But, how was he here? Where had he been? The longer Ragnar was staying awake the more his mind raced with questions, with worries and fears.

“H-how, w-here were y-yo-”

Yet another painful cough. Athelstan ran a tender hand over Ragnar’s shivering back, feeling the king’s ribs press against his skin. He had been sick for a long time now, was far weaker than the priest had ever seen him.

“You have to rest, Ragnar.”  
“But w-what if yo-u are gone w-hen I wake? I c-can’t bear to l-lose you again-”  
“I will be here. I promise.”

To the king’s surprise, the priest was there when he woke again. He had no clue how long he was out for; days, weeks? Yol was approaching quickly, that much he gathered from the talking around him over the past few days. He was twisting in his heavy pelts and knocked his sweat-drenched head against something soft situated next to him.

“Are you awake?”

Athelstan’s voice was soft as always, but something sounded off about it. As though he was hoarse, too. Ragnar hoped he hadn’t infected the miracle with this plague of death that seemed to never leave his body.

With a groan he pushed up to sit, his head following the soft warmth of the body next to him. Soon he was pressed against a shoulder, and when he opened his shaking eyes he saw a curious but tender look in a pair of dark blue eyes he thought he was only going to see in hallucinations and dreams for the rest of his life.

“Am I dreaming?” Ragnar asked, his voice hoarse and quiet from not speaking for so long.

Athelstan shook his head very gently, careful not to move too much. Ragnar was only just starting to regain some strength again, and he didn’t want the king to topple over just yet.

“No,” the priest said quietly, “I am here.”  
“Where did you go?”

There was a moment of silence, Athelstan’s gaze dropping slightly and a hand lifting to caress over his throat. Ragnar chanced moving back to see, and saw a long, broad, freshly-healed scar run the over Athelstan’s throat.

He had been attacked.

Ragnar’s blood started to boil instantly.

“Something happened. But by the grace of God, I survived. I do not remember exactly what, or how… but I was healed. And when I returned to Kattegat, you had all gone to raid. So I waited here, for you to return.”  
“Who did this? Tell me and I will rip their throats out with my bare hands-”

A passion so deep it made Ragnar’s eyes shine also made his voice harden, his words curling in snarls and his body - weak as it still was - aching from becoming ready to fight already, muscles tensing and heating up fast. There was nothing Ragnar wanted more right then than to do just as much harm to the person who had attacked the younger man, but even as he spoke so loud and vicious Athelstan raised a soft hand to cup Ragnar’s chin and shut his mouth slowly.

“It matters not, Ragnar. The Lord wants for us to forgive those who mean to do us harm, to turn the other cheek and not become them. I understand if you want to seek revenge for me, but I am not dead. I am here.”  
“You will never be permitted to leave my side ever again. Ever.”

And he never did, after that.

Everywhere Ragnar went, so did Athelstan. The King used the priest for support to walk, sat with him anywhere in the ever-growing city, even got an addition to the sleep quarters just for Athelstan to stay in. The evenings where Aslaug decided to sleep in Ivar’s bed after he outgrew his crib, Ragnar pulled Athelstan with him under the covers. The evenings he couldn’t, he always laid facing the way to see into Athelstan’s room, only a thin wall of cloth hanging in the way.

The longer this went on, the more attached Ragnar became to having Athelstan near him. Often, instead of his children sitting by his feet, it would be Athelstan, and the king would caress tenderly over the long scar on his priest’s throat as he scanned the room for the perpetrator. Athelstan never said who it was. But Ragnar knew. Ragnar knew after the last night of Yol and Floki had snarled a little too loud when the king’s calloused fingertips ran over the elevated skin under them.

He would make his old friend pay for hurting him so. For making him wish he had just died in Paris. For making him believe Athelstan was gone forever.

But he wasn’t… he was a living miracle, sitting between the king’s legs, nudging his head against Ragnar’s knee, almost purring from the tender touches he was given. Ragnar didn’t care that anyone saw. Never again would he lose what he cared for the most, besides his sons, in this life in Midgard. Instead they would travel together again, set sails together towards Paris next spring to figure out if Rollo’s choice of being left behind had been smart, to fight against the Franks together. Just as they were fated to from the start, ever since Ragnar had grasped the collar of the little monk in Northumbria so many years ago.


End file.
